“Of course.” Amanda stifled an inward sigh. Well, she had known that she would have to put herself within his reach again. She couldn’t help him from a safe distance, for goodness’ sake. But …
“I really won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice oddly gentle. His eyes were knowing as they watched the emotions that flitted all too plainly across her face. “From a strictly practical standpoint, I would be a fool to, wouldn’t I? Without you I’d be stuck on this damned beach until your friend or some of his cohorts came back and found me—and I’m counting on you to bring me food and a few other necessities, too. Hurting you would be the last thing I’d dream of doing.”
Amanda thought about that for a moment. It made sense, she realized with a quiver of relief. Feeling a little better, she edged closer until he was once again grasping her hand in his. The feel of those strong fingers locking around hers brought a rush of panic with it. She tugged sharply at her hand, wanting instinctively to be free. He released it at once.
“See?” he said softly, meeting her eyes. Amanda returned his look for an instant, then nodded. And extended her hand to him again.
Helping him to his feet, feeling the warmth and strength and life of his body as he leaned heavily against her side, she began to feel a little better about what she was doing. Perhaps he deserved to be captured, deserved to forfeit his life for what he had done—and she knew that most people, the nuns included, would say that there was no perhaps about it—but she didn’t see how his death could really benefit anyone. The people he had killed—as she thought of them she winced—were dead; nothing could bring them back. Matthew Grayson was alive. And whatever he had done, he was a human being and he needed her help. She couldn’t just abandon him to his fate or, worse, turn him over to it herself. It just wasn’t in her, and she knew it.
It took a little time and quite a lot of effort, but they managed to traverse the eighth mile of beach that separated them from the outcropping of rock that hid the entrance to the cave. The opening itself was just a narrow fissure running sideways through the hard stone of the cliff, barely wide enough for a grown man to slide through sideways. It was nearly impossible to see from the beach unless one knew it was there. In the old days—and still upon occasion, as Amanda knew full well—it was used by smugglers; as far as she was aware, she and the smugglers were the only ones who remembered its existence. And with the nightly patrol on the beach, she doubted that the smugglers would be using it anytime in the near future. She had to grin at that. How the smugglers must be cursing Matthew Grayson. He had undoubtedly put a severe crimp in their usual operations, not only here but along the entire English coast.
“Something funny?” He sounded faintly put out, and, glancing up at him, Amanda didn’t blame him. Sweat was rolling freely down his face; he was pale and obviously in pain while she was grinning like a hyena. The thought made her grin again, wider than before, and he rewarded her with a sour look.
“Share the joke, why don’t you? I could use a good laugh.”
So Amanda did. He didn’t appear to find it overwhelmingly amusing, but it did help to take his mind off the pain he must have suffered as he squeezed through the narrow opening. Once inside, it was so dark that Amanda couldn’t even see his face as he stood right next to her. If it hadn’t been for the weight of him leaning against her, and the feel of his hard arm wrapped around her shoulders, she might have thought she had imagined everything.
The cave was as cool and damp and dark as a grave. Before they could proceed any farther, they had to have a light. The candle Amanda always left inside was just to the left of the entrance, but before she could find it, she had to free herself of his crushing weight.
She stretched out her hand to feel for the stone wall behind them. It was cold and moist to the touch.
“Can you lean against the wall for a moment?” she asked, her voice sounding almost unnaturally loud in the tomblike quiet. “I have to light a candle.”
“A candle?” He sounded surprised, but he obligingly allowed her to ease him against the wall; when he was reasonably secure, he released his grip on her shoulders. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Amanda Rose? Do you always carry candles about in your pockets, or did you just have a feeling you might need one this morning?”
She thought she detected humor in his voice. When she struck a match from the box she always left beside the candle and touched it to the wick so that the flame caught and flared, she was sure of it. The flickering light made him look pale and drawn—and huge; his shadow crawled up the side of the cave like that of a dark giant—but a grin crooked his mouth and his eyes were whimsical.
“Are you a witch, Amanda? Or my guardian angel come to life? Although I must admit I never would have guessed that angels came with hair of such a devilish red. Or are you a hallucination? You’re certainly too good to be true.”
Amanda straightened, the movement slow and cautious, and eyed him uneasily. She was almost sure that he had been out of his head when she had first come upon him, and when he had first mistaken her for an angel. Was he going out of his head again? The thought alarmed her. A rational murderer was bad enough. An irrational one … She must have looked as nervous as she felt because his grin widened, and she could have sworn that his eyes teased her.
“Come on,” she said, hoping that cold practicality would restore his possibly wandering senses. Candle in hand, she moved toward him, a little apprehensive about letting him touch her if he was going out of his mind. Perhaps he killed only during fits of insanity … But it was too late to worry about that now, she told herself, and fatalistically took his arm and draped it over her shoulder again. “It’s not very far now, and then you can rest.”
“Perhaps you’re one of the devil’s angels,” he continued musingly as she urged him forward. “If the devil has angels, which I’m sure he must. He sounds like a smart old fellow. Perhaps he’s sent you to tempt me down to hell. Ah, well, lead on. At this point even hell sounds good. At least it’s warm. Or so I’ve heard.”
Amanda threw another anxious look up at him as they staggered along the worn stone passage that led deep into the cave. His eyes were very bright—with fever?—and his skin was so white beneath the scraggly beard and smears of blood that it frightened her. He looked as if he might faint at any moment. Standing so close to him, with his arm around her shoulders and his big body pressed hard against her side, she could feel the unnatural warmth of him even through the wet chill of his clothes. He radiated heat like a stove. He needed a doctor, she thought, but she knew it would be impossible for him to be seen by one. He would have to live or die on her ministrations alone—and his own strength.
When at last they reached the round, high-ceilinged cavern that was Amanda’s goal, she let out a sigh of relief. He was swaying, and Amanda knew she wouldn’t have been able to support him much farther.
“We’re here. You can rest now,” she told him, and gasped as his knees buckled. It was all she could do to prevent him from pitching headfirst onto the stone floor.
“Sorry,” he muttered as she eased him down and knelt beside him. He lay sprawled on his stomach on the stone with his head cushioned on his bent arm. “I’m just so damned tired.”
Amanda touched his shoulder anxiously.
“Just lie still. I’m going to go get you a blanket,” she said, feeling the heat of his skin through the damp shirt. “I’ll be right back. I’ll leave the candle.”
She left him lying in the flickering pool of light while she groped along the wall to a small passage that led off to the right. Although the candle’s cheerful yellow glow would have been nice, she had no real need of the light. In the almost five years she had been at the convent, she had walked along this passage hundreds of times—to the aged trapdoor that opened right into the convent’s deepest cellar. In the days when the convent had been a castle—sometime in the sixteenth century, she thought—the lower cellar had probably been used as a dungeon. Now it served as an almost forgotten storage room, and Amanda was as certain as it was possible to be that the sisters had no notion of the trapdoor’s existence. Presumably it had been designed as an escape hatch for the castle’s original owner and was forgotten later when the land was confiscated and presented to the Church under James I.
Amanda had discovered the door and then the cave quite by accident just a few weeks after her arrival at the convent. She had been hiding from Sister Boniface, who was determined to quell the small, red-haired, rebellious Amanda by whatever means were necessary. A lady of good family who had chosen the life of a nun in preference to matrimony and motherhood, Sister Boniface had rigid notions of what constituted correct behavior for schoolroom misses. Being kicked in the shin by a child she had properly been chastising—for swimming in the open bay while clad in only the flimsiest of undergarments—outraged the sister. But the kick had allowed Amanda to escape, at least temporarily. She had fled and eventually found her way to the very darkest corner of the lower cellar, where she had lain hidden beneath a pile of old clothes while the search for her went on above. Lying against the cold stone, shivering as much with fright as with chill, Amanda had felt something hard and even colder than the floor pressing into her stomach. Upon examination, it had turned out to be a circular iron ring attached to a door cunningly fashioned out of flagstones to match the floor. Not without difficulty, she had managed to pry it open. A shallow flight of worn stone stairs led down into darkness. Step by cautious step, she had descended—and found the cave.
At first its dark, winding passages and echoing caverns had frightened her. But over the years she had grown quite fond of the place and had got in the habit of sneaking out of her bed before anyone else was up and following the passageway down to the beach. Except for the few occasions when the smugglers had used it—and when she had been careful to stay out of the way—no one else had entered the cave since she had first explored it. It should be a safe place for Matthew Grayson to hide and recover his strength in. And after that, she thought, pacifying her unhappy sense of self-preservation, he would be on his own.
There was an old blanket just inside the trapdoor, and an ancient feather tick. Amanda sometimes wrapped herself in the blanket and curled up on the mattress when it was too cold to go walking along the shore. Even on the iciest winter day the cave never got much colder than it was right now, and it was an ideal place to read or think …
The blanket and the mattress together were awkward to carry, but they weren’t particularly heavy. Amanda lugged them back as quickly as she could. The sun would be up by now, she guessed, and she would be missed if she didn’t get back to her room soon. And then there would be all sorts of questions …
Matthew Grayson was still lying where she had left him; he didn’t appear to have moved so much as a muscle. Amanda felt a sudden spasm of alarm. Had he died? What on earth would she do if he did? But her fear was allayed as she saw his back move slightly. He was still breathing, at least.
She dragged the mattress until it lay beside him, then knelt to place a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Mr. Grayson,” she said urgently, shaking his shoulder just a little. “Mr. Grayson …”
One eye opened blearily. “You’d better call me Matt,” he muttered, his words slurring.
“Matt,” she repeated obediently. “I’ve brought you a mattress. Can you roll over onto it? You’ll be much more comfortable once you’re off this cold stone, and I have a blanket for you, too.”
“See? I knew you were an angel,” he said on a note of intense satisfaction, and painfully rolled so that he was lying on his back on the feather tick. He needed to be out of those wet clothes, Amanda knew, but she drew the line at undressing him.
“You’d better take your clothes off,” she said, fighting hard to sound matter-of-fact. He made a dismissive gesture. “Too tired … later,” he muttered, and closed his eyes. Amanda hesitated, then, not knowing what else to do, spread the blanket over him, carefully tucking it in about his shoulders and legs. He didn’t move.
“I have to go now,” she said. “If the sisters miss me, they’ll ask all kinds of questions and I’m not a very good liar. I won’t be able to come back until tonight, when everyone’s in bed. I’ll bring you some food then. I’m sorry I can’t do more for you now, but …”
He nodded without opening his eyes. Amanda hovered for a moment, staring at him helplessly. There really wasn’t anything more she could do.
“You’ll stay right here, won’t you?” she felt impelled to ask. “You won’t try to go anywhere? You’ll be perfectly safe here. No one comes here anymore but me.”
“Where would I go?” he muttered, and Amanda bit her lip at the desolation she thought she detected in his voice.
“I’ll leave you the candle,” she said softly, standing up. He nodded again, weakly. Amanda looked at him a moment longer, hating to leave him in such a condition, then shook her head. She
had
to get back to her room …
She almost made it. Without incident, she went through the trapdoor, across both cellars, and up five flights of stairs to the very top of the turret, where her bedroom perched in solitary splendor. The sun was full risen and the nuns must be risen, too. It was not until she actually had her hand on the latch of her chamber door that the voice spoke behind her.
“Where have you been?”
Amanda jumped as if the voice had bitten her, then whirled about. The girl on the stairs below her jumped, too, and had to clutch the oak bannister to keep her balance.
“Oh, Susan, you almost scared me to death,” Amanda gasped, her hand pressed to her frantically pounding heart as she stared at her closest friend. Lady Susan Hartwood was a pretty, dark-haired girl cursed with Amanda’s own lack of inches, but compensated with a pleasingly plump body that made her appear several years older than her actual age of nineteen. She had been a resident of the convent for more than two years now, having been banished from the bosom of her family—and the eyes and, the family hoped, the memories of the denizens of the polite world—after she had had the misfortune to be raped by a gang of highwaymen while on her way to a weekend house party scant weeks after her comeout. From what she had told Amanda—and Amanda believed her, for Susan was not the type to tell a self-serving lie—the fact that she was blameless hadn’t seemed to matter to her family. Her father, the Earl of Kidd, had blamed his daughter for the attack that had taken her virginity; he could no longer bear to have her in his house or to hear her name mentioned. Susan had told her that the Earl and Countess of Kidd felt that it would be best for everyone concerned—except, perhaps, Susan—if their disgraced daughter took holy vows and spent the rest of her life behind the convent’s high walls.